Connecticut, show Campbell as a faithful, if not an inspired, reporter of the events of the day.[1]
That the memory of Harris' attempt with the first newspaper still lingered is shown by Campbell's reference to his own letters as journals of Publick Occurances, although it is evident that the summary treatment accorded Harris' publication had chilled any printer or writer who might have thought of a second attempt along similar lines. But the newspaper was bound to come, especially when the newspapers in the mother country were attracting so much attention and exercising so great an influence on the public mind.
With the expiration of the censorship in England in 1695,—for which relief so much was owing to John Locke's argument before Parliament[2]—journals sprang up by the dozen, and, though America remained dependent on the news-letter and belated copies of London papers for its information, England was flooded with newspapers and newspaper discussion. The first daily newspaper in London made its appearance in 1702; and the same year that Campbell started what was really the first newspaper in America, Daniel Defoe started his Review in London.
So it might be said that the appearance of the Boston News-Letter on April 24, 1704, was not so much a sign of progressiveness as an evidence of the backwardness of the colonies. Samuel Sewall, the faithful diarist, records under this date, the fact that the News-Letter had come out and that he had taken the first copy ever carried "over the river" to President Willard of Harvard University. We do not hear now of the lamentations that accompanied the virile publication of Benjamin Har-
